Ah yes, why not? The last time we did this, it was March 2011, so it's been almost a year since we offered a little insight into what kind of operating systems and browsers you, dear readers, are using. Nothing particularly earth-shattering going on here.

There is one difference with browser wars I, they are all open specifications. Most of the time there is real discussion, it is all out in de open.

You have to remember this is the W3 and IETF process:
- someone has an idea
- discuss/make a draft specification
- 1 or more vendors implement something
- in CSS/JavaScript they will get a "vendor-prefix" so it does not conflict with the real standard if it works differently.
- there will be a lot of in the field experience
- a more "final" specification is made
- all or atleast most of the vendors implement the "final" specification
- the specification is announced as final
- the remaining vendor will probably also implement it

So the time between: have an idea and get something in one or 2 vendors browser is actually not all that long. Maybe half a year, but it can take years before all vendors adopt it.

There is nothing proprietary about it.

Have to admit, the Google developers do create a lot of new ideas/code to try it out in real life.

Something like SPDY needs a lot of operational experience before any other vendors would even think of deploying it. Deploying it on the Google websites is thus a really good idea.

Other vendors are free to come up with their own ideas and implement them. If it turns out they have a better idea, other vendors will adapt that.

In a recent discussion I had with Hakum Lie, CTO of browser maker Opera Software, the Nordic exec expressed concern about Google's approach.

"It's often that [Google] launch[es] services without testing in all browsers. We sometimes wake up in the morning and see a new Google service with things we could have fixed if they'd worked with us during the development phase," Lie said. "Now that they have their own browser, they think less of making sure it works across the board, which is a concern, because Google wouldn't have existed if it hadn't been for open standards. We'd probably all live in Microsoft land."

But Lie acknowledged Google's contributions to Web standards, "Some of those experiments are great," he said. "We need to have experimentation going on, and we can't demand that everything works in all browsers. But you should test in major browsers."

It is abused quite a bit by developers, go to Smashing Magazine and find one of their "top 20 sites doing coolest <something or other>" and check how many of those sites work in IE8 or even IE9, some won't even work correctly in Firefox.

There is one difference with browser wars I, they are all open specifications. Most of the time there is real discussion, it is all out in de open.
You have to remember this is the W3 and IETF process:
- someone has an idea
- discuss/make a draft specification
[...]
Something like SPDY needs a lot of operational experience before any other vendors would even think of deploying it. Deploying it on the Google websites is thus a really good idea.

Yes, "one browser vendor widely deploys it early in few of the most popular web services around" should be on that list itself / it really doesn't seem to you similar to the fuss about MS & bundling of IE with Windows? (plus http://www.osnews.com/permalink?503344 )